The Malaise of Jewish Education

 

Isa Aron

owhere has the combined power of emancipa-
tion and Enlightenment been felt more keenly

than in the American Jewish community. In
America the fabric of Jewish life, so woven in
premodern times, has become unraveled and frayed.
While Judaism has remainedhn all-encompassing way
of life for a small minority of American Jews, for most
it has rather quickly been reduced to the status of a
leisure-time activity, a separate compartment of a largely
secular lifestyle.

American Jews, on the whole, engage in relatively few
activities that are speci?cally Jewish: donations to the
Jewish Welfare Fund, twice-yearly synagogue attendance,
celebration of a few holidays and life-cycle events, and
largely unexamined emotions stirred by the Holocaust
and the State of Israel constitute the Jewishness of
threevquarters of the American Jewish community.

One additional item belongs on this list of residual
Jewish activities?attending, or sending one?s children
to, aJewish supplementary school. Sociologists estimate
that 80 percent of American Jews have, at one point in
their childhood, been exposed to some form of Jewish
schooling; for the vast majority of them, this means
Sunday or Hebrew school. For many American Jews
the number of hours spent in supplementary school as
children may equal or exceed the number of hours they
will spend on all other Jewish activities as adults.

One of the great anomalies of American Jewish life,
therefore, is the lack of attention paid to the Jewish
supplementary school. Clearly, supplementary schools
could play a critical role in forming the identity of
American Jews, but thus far no one?parents, former
students, or leaders in the Jewish community?has recog-
nized the importance of these schools. Though some
schools do serve as focal points for rich Jewish lives,
most have trouble or, at best, are irrelevant. Many are
plagued by low attendance, discipline problems, and
an unclear purpose. For at least half of the students,

- their time spent in ?religious school" is simply part of

the price of having a bar or bat mitzvah; predictably,

 

Isa Aron is an associate professor of Jewish education at the
Rhea Hirsch School of Education at Hebrew Union College in
Los Angeles.

32 VOL. 4, N0. 3

this half drops out shortly after this rite of passage.

Teachers in supplementary schools, more than any
other Jewish adults, have the opportunity to represent
the Jewish tradition to students in an appealing and
accessible way. But good teachers are in short supply,
which is not surprising, given their low pay and status.
The education directors of supplementary schools, while
generally better paid, are still low on the. totem pole of
Jewish professionals. For all that federations and other
Jewish organizations pay lip service to Jewish education
(through ads and campaign slogans), they have failed,
by and large, to face squarely the needs and problems
of the Jewish supplementary school.

Since the ?mOdernization? of Jewish education (begun
in the early decades of the twentieth century by Samson
Benderly and others), Jewish supplementary schools
have modeled themselves after public schools: children
are divided, according to age or ability, into separate
classes. Each class is assigned a teacher, who is respon-
sible for teaching a particular subject, using a textbook,
work sheets, or other materials. This setting is so familiar
to us that schooling is often used as a synonym for edu-
cation. Education is a much broader concept, however,
which encompasses a variety of ways in which the adult
population transmits its traditions to its youth. The type
of education exemplified by the public schools is more
appropriately termed ?instruction,? which is defined in
dictionaries as the act of furnishing someone with
knowledge, usually by means of a systematic method.

To equate education with instruction is to assume
that knowledge, skills, and even attitudes and practices
are objects that can be handed down from one person
to another. It is to assume, further, that these objects
can be collected, codi?ed, segmented, and packaged in
textbooks, ,or other learning materials. The
school, according to this view, is a ?delivery system,?
in which teachers, administrators, and a variety of
specialists work together to transmit these objects to
their students as ef?ciently as possible.

An alternative paradigm has been suggested by John
Westerhoff in his Will Our Children Have Faith? (Sea-
bury Press, paradigm of ?enculturation.? This
paradigm takes as its model the situation of a young
child, or a visitor to a foreign country, as he or she

 

 

a 

 

 

 

.. -. .

i


 

absorbs a new language, new customs and values, and
large amounts of information. The newcomer?s learning
is not planned or measured; there is no ?proper? order
by which to learn, and no way of segmenting into
measured portions the knowledge he or she acquires.
Learning in such a situation is both more holistic and
more serendipitous; it is also more enduring.

Successful instruCtion is usually founded on a base
of successful enculturation, which provides the student
with both the morivation to learn and opportunities to
consolidate that learning. In secular schools, for example,
both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations come into play.
In all but the most impoverished and illiterate of en-
vironments, basic skills such as reading and mathematics
are valued and utilized by nearly everyone?a powerful
intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, achievement in secu-
lar education is linked, at least partially, to entry into
high-status occupations?hence the extrinsic motivation.
These motivating factors create an atmosphere in which
instruction is viable. By contrast, students who do not
come to school already motivated in these ways are
often called ?culturally deprived.?

he long-term effects of instruction are also de-

pendent upon enculturation. How much algebra,

geometry, or trigonometry do most people re-
member? What of the foreign languages that students
study for four years but have no opportunity to use?
Knowledge, skills, and even values and attitudes will
only remain in an individual?s active memory when that
person?s culture affords him or her the opportunity to
exercise them.

The Jewish child in a supplementary Jewish school
is not unlike the ?culturally deprived? child in a public
school. The curricula of most supplementary schools
focus priniarily on Hebrew, Bible, holiday celebrations,
and synagogue skills. But a recent study conducted by
the New York Board of Jewish Education found that
less than 20 percent of the parents of supplementary
school students attend synagogue regularly?that is,
other than on the High Holidays. In only 16 percent of
the students? homes are Shabbat candles lit every week;
in 45 percent of the homes someone lights Shabbat
candles ?occasionally.? Though there are no statistics to
bear out this hunch, it would be safe to assume that
few American Jews speak Hebrew or read the Bible
very often.

In his 1979 dissertation ?Ethnic Survival in America,?
an ethnographic study of a Conservative supplementary
school, David Schoem recounts the following scene:

In what was a typical classroom lesson, a seventh
grade teacher asked the students to describe in what

ways the Sabbath differed from other days of the

week. In response to a student?s answer that ?on the
Sabbath we pray,? one teacher said, ?But you pray
every day.? In this case not only was the teacher?s
response completely detached from reality, but the
student who answered was also speaking in theoreti-
cal terms. Many of the students in the class had not
been to a prayer service on the Sabbath for up to
six months or more. When the teacher, who managed
a restaurant on Friday evenings, then began to speak
about ?why don?t we work on the Sabbath,? students
giggled incredulously because of the question?s
absurdity. Clearly, this lesson that was being discussed
in ?rst person terms was, in the students? minds,
about a people that was far removed from their
own reality.

Instruction that is not founded upon enculturation
seems doomed to failure. When information is trans-
mitted in the absence of its rich cultural context, actions
and concepts that once were integral to the culture lose
their signi?cance. Children go through the motions of
attending religious school and becoming bar or bat
mitzvah, but they see no meaning or purpose in these
actions and drop out of supplementary school shortly
thereafter.

Why do schools persist in seeing their mission as
primarily one of instruction? One reason is that instruc-
tion is far easier to de?ne, plan, monitor, and evaluate
than enculturation. In instruction, the goals are relatively
simple, such as knowing a piece of information or
achieving a certain level of pro?ciency. Enculturation,
by contrast, requires a different sort of planning and
evaluation. The goal of making students feel more
Jewishly committed or more religiously observant eludes
easy de?nition and simple assessment.

A second reason schools adhere to the instructional
paradigm is that their leaders look to public schools as
their primary educational model. Intent on creating
?real? schools, they attempt to replicate the mode of
organization currently in vogue in secular schools.

Enculturation, however, must be the priority of the
supplementary school, for the simple reason that it is
a prerequisite for valuing and retaining the contents
of instruction. Instruction and enculturation are not
incompatible goals; in the best of all worlds one would
try to pursue both. But given time constraints, a sup-
plementary school may have to give one educational
approach priority over the other. In making this choice,
supplementary schools must never lose sight of the fact
that instruction without enculturation is hollow and
super?cial.

The supplementary school wishing to ad0pt encul-
turation as its primary goal will ?nd many of its current
institutional arrangements ill-suited for that purpose.

JEWISH EDUCATION 33

 

 

um. ..  .. 

 

 

The typical supplementary school follows the public
school in grouping children by age and assigning each
age group to an individual teacher. It aspires to a sequen-
tial, segmented curriculum, even if it does not actually
adhere to one. Bureaus of Jewish Education and other
agencies that service these schools concern themselves
with licensing, accountability, and other bureaucratic
details of the instructional paradigm. When encultura-
tion, rather than instruction, is the primary goal, how-
ever, all these features may be counterproductive. Why
should students be segregated by age? Why should they
have only one teacher at a time? Are the teacher?s
quali?cations on paper his or her most important
characteristic?

believe that the dif?cult can be accomplished, for

I have seen supplementary schools that seem to be

succeeding at both enculturating and instructing.
And certain guiding principles unite these schools.

First, the educators running them have devoted con-
siderable energy to analyzing and articulating the culture
into which they wish to bring their students. This is
rarely an easy task, and always controversial. It means
that a school must clarify which beliefs and practices it
will deliberately foster, which it will tolerate, and which
it will consider beyond the range of acceptability. It
further requires that the school make sure that its high-
est values are embedded in the structure of the school
itself, at every level. For example, if the school values
learning, are opportunities for learning available to
teachers, secretaries, and parents, as well as to the
rabbi and administration? Is the value of tzeda/ea/J (jus-
tice, or charity) manifest not only in the collection
of money, but in the relationships among the people
who work and study at the institution?

A second characteristic of schools whose goal is en-
culturation is their concern with the authenticity of
the subject matter. The instructional paradigm tends to
favor textbooks, workbooks, and other learning materials
that simplify and segment the subject matter. Encul-
turation, on the other hand, depends upon authentic
encounters with a culture in all its richness and com-
plexity. Studying about the Torah is not the same as
studying Torah; learning prayers is not the same as
praying. Thinking about how to transmit a tradition
authentically to students for whom Judaism is an alien
culture is a challenge indeed. In the supplementary
school setting, adherence to the principle of encultura-
tion probably requires a willingness to forgo breadth
in favor of depth. It also requires hiring teachers who
feel authentically connected to the material (for example,
teachers who regularly pray instead of merely knowing
how to pray). This may seem like an impossible dream.
Yet I have seen Torah and Talmud taught in English to

34 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3

 

novices, and I have participated in services in which a
small number of prayers were davenea' (prayed) with
great leavana (devotion) in both Hebrew and English.

A third guiding principle concerns general criteria
for teacher selection. In a perfect world each school
community would have teachers who were knowledge-
able in Judaica, highly skilled in pedagogy, and thus
deserving of certi?cation from the National Board of
License. But in this imperfect world we must often
compromise on one or more of these desiderata. Schools
that see their goal as instruction tend to compromise
on community membership; they hire the most quali?ed
teacher they can ?nd, even someone who would never
identify with the synagogue community. If, on the other
hand, the goal of enculturation is taken seriously, en-
thusiastic participation in the synagogue community
ought to be the highest priority. There exist today a
number of outstanding examples of synagogue schools
that have recruited active community members and
trained them as teachers.

A fourth point to keep in mind is that schools that
succeed at enculturation typically pay close attention to
the informal dimension of their activities. Planned ac-
tivities, such as retreats and outings, as well as unplanned
ones, such as the interaction between students and
teachers during recess, are viewed not as supplementary
enrichment, but as essential. For example, in one school
I observed, a teacher and a student had an ongoing game
of chess during class breaks. Chess is certainly not part
of the school?s formal curriculum, but this informal
activity, valued by both student and teacher, contributed
much to the warm and collegial atmosphere of the class
and to the school?s genuine sense of community.

A ?fth and ?nal principle of enculturation is that
schools must ?nd ways to reach parents as well as
children. Much has been written in the past decade
about the importance of family education in the Jewish
supplementary school. I would only add that if encul-
turation is the goal, parents must be active in and
integral to the school; they must be valued for their
contribution as decision makers and shouldn?t be con-
ceived of merely as assistants.

Clearly many issues and questions remain: Does the
typical synagogue have a suf?cient number of adult
members whose own cultural background is rich enough
to make them contributors to this process? If not, how
can adult members themselves become enculturated?
How will potential agents of enculturation be identi?ed,
prepared, and deployed? What will motivate them to
give of their time? What types of professionals are
required to orchestrate such a process? What organiza-
tional structures will best facilitate it? Those who are
convinced of the importance of enculturation will, I
hope, take up these questions as their next step. El